1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus provided with an internal recording medium, capable of transferring data to and from a prescribed external recording medium.
2. Description of Related Art
Electronic data preservation using various recording media including discs, tapes and cards have become a common practice, and is extensively used in audio, video, photographic and computer apparatuses.
In consumer applications, it is often used in the recording of music, moving pictures and still pictures, and it is particularly in these fields that compatibility between different recording/reproducing systems is frequently required.
Moreover, different recording media are diverse in recording capacity, shape, size, therefore portability, and the configurations of the drive mechanism and other components of matching recording/reproducing apparatuses, and are designed to suit their respective purposes.
Meanwhile, conventional computers are generally known to have a large capacity hard disk drive and a floppy disk drive both built into them. Said hard disk drive and said floppy disk drive are connected by a data bus to permit data transfers between them.
However, the hard disk drive and the floppy disk drive built into the computer are provided with a magnetic head each and, moreover, an elevating mechanism to move said magnetic head up and down, with the consequence that it is difficult to make the computer portable, especially to reduce its thickness.
Further, the hard disk drive is particularly difficult to make its configuration thin because its magnetic head should be controlled so as to keep it at a prescribed distance from the disc surface.
Scrutiny of individual apparatuses for various purposes, which electronically preserve data on a recording medium, reveals that satisfactory modes of use are not always realized.
A digital still camera may be taken as an example. A digital still camera uses a memory card, for instance, as recording medium, keeps the data of the pictures shot with it, and can read out of the memory card photographic image data at any desired time to display the picture on a display unit consisting of a liquid crystal panel or a connected monitoring apparatus such as a television set at home.
Saving picture data of photographs on a highly portable small memory card is very convenient for photography. Using a memory card in an apparatus, such as a digital still camera, which is required to be compact and portable and, unlike disc media including a floppy disk and a magneto-optic disc, does not require a complex loading mechanism or recording/reproducing head mechanism, greatly facilitates the size and cost reduction of the apparatus.
However, a small memory card whose recording capacity is considerably smaller than that of a large capacity recording medium, such as a disc medium, is not suitable for preserving a large quantity of picture data. In other words, a large number of memory cards are required to keep picture data of photography.
On the other hand, if a disc medium is used instead of a memory card to achieve a large recording capacity, while a large volume of picture data can be preserved, it will entail the problems of complexity of the loading mechanism and the recording/reproducing head mechanism, together with the resultant larger size, poorer portability and higher cost of the apparatus.
In certain cases, including that of a digital still camera for instance, the most suitable system configuration for the intended purpose cannot be always chosen because of the strong and weak points of the recording medium to be used, and this problem is particularly serious with apparatuses for consumer use, on which the cost constraint is especially stringent.